Dr Colin Hill at University College Cork, who heads a team investigating food safety and toxicology, has a salutary message: "Food-borne disease has been described by the World Health Organisation as `the most widespread health problem in the contemporary world'."
The consequences of food-borne disease are enormous, both in human and economic costs. The annual cost to the US economy alone is estimated at more than $8 billion, with as many as 50 million individual cases ever year.
Even more significantly, food-borne disease probably accounts for almost a third of preventable deaths in developing countries (up to 15 million fatalities every year).
In developed countries one in five people can expect to suffer food-borne illness in any year.
The incidence of food-borne disease is increasing, perhaps due in part to changes in eating habits, convenience foods, ready-to-eat foods etc, and food-processors are aware of the need to provide safe food to maintain consumer confidence.
Recent food scares include E.coli O157:H7; BSE residues in foods; salmonella in poultry and eggs.
It's almost enough to make one pass on the souffle or lamb cutlets and personally, after a recent encounter with food poisoning in a certain restaurant in a certain town in the southwest, I'm inclined to applaud the work being carried out by Dr Hill and his team.
He says: "There are four principal causes of food-borne disease; bacteria, fungi, viruses and toxic compounds. Ongoing research in UCC addresses all of these. "Currently, the research efforts into the control, identification and understanding of microbial pathogens is carried out primarily in three research groups in the microbiology department at UCC."
Dr Hill's laboratory is mainly interested in bacterial pathogens, and one section of the research work is committed to developing novel control agents (bacteriocins) to deal with and master pathogenic organisms in food.
But the scientific experts are worried.
"A significant concern in this regard is the emergence of bacteriocin-resistant strains," he says, adding that his team hopes to address this important issue and in time, in collaboration with the Agricultural Research Centre at Moorepark, close to Fermoy, to beat the bugs that make us ill.
While the scientists are looking through their microscopes, Dr Hill goes on to say there will have to be a co-ordinated approach to food safety "from farm to fork".
Later this year UCC will host a major conference dealing with the topic of "Emerging Issues in Food Safety".
International scientists will gather at the Cork campus to debate and discuss the issue from June 20th to 23rd.